PrintTeriyaki: Seattle's Signature Dish
Photograph from UCLAcyc on Flickr
Philly's got cheesesteaks, New York's got pizza, Chicago's got hot dogs, and Seattle has ... teriyaki?
According to a story in the Seattle Weekly, the grilled meat dish is fast becoming the ubiquitous dish in the Emerald City.
Nothing seems to stop the exponential growth of teriyaki shops in Seattle and its surrounding environs, including market saturation. To wit, the Washington Restaurant Association recently generated a list of all the restaurants in its master database with "teriyaki" in the name, listed by date of entry. As of 1984, the database contained 19 (that is, restaurants still in business). That number doubled by 1987. In the mid-1990s, 20 to 40 teriyaki joints appear to have been opening every year, and the database now contains 519 listings statewide (there are more than 100 teriyaki shops within Seattle's city limits alone)—which doesn't include restaurants that favor "Bento," "Wok," or "Deli" over "Teriyaki" in their titles.
The story traces teriyaki's history in Seattle, which begins, possibly, as early as 1908 in the city's Nihonbashi district but which really takes off with the opening of Toshi's Teriyaki in 1976—a time of great Asian influx into the Seattle area and one that saw diners searching for healthier fare and Asian flavors—creating the perfect nexus for the teriyaki explosion.
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4 Comments:
Teriyaki is just as common as Kauffman says, and it's amazingly uncool. I have never heard anyone other than college freshmen debate the merits of different teriyaki places.
Being uncool myself, I eat it pretty often.
mamster at 10:53PM on 08/16/07
When I moved to Oregon, I remember encountering "bento," which seems to be interchangeable with "teriyaki." Being a rosy cheeked Midwesterner, I had never heard of "bento" before, but I came to understand it as "grilled meat on a stick slathered with a thick, sweet, oily sauce and placed over a large bed of white rice." People used the word bento as if it were a cuisine unto itself. "Do you want to get bento for lunch?" registered similarly to, say, "do you want to get Thai for lunch?" It wasn't until later, when I visited Japan that I learned that "bento" was the term for a type of meal set and not a cuisine.
Anyway, I'm with you, Mamster. I never got that into bento/teriyaki, but I ate it often enough—it was cheap and filling. Just like all those items that have become the iconic foods of their respective cities.
Adam Kuban at 3:58AM on 08/17/07
I'm not sold on the article. I can see how/why there were places in Seattle in the early 1900s, but the later post 1980s growth is not really notable - if anything I would chalk it up to suburban expansion.
As far as great food in Seattle traditionally I can think of two: sushi and thai. Now it's branching out into more European, Indian, and other cuisines.
But for the size of the city, the quality of sushi, thai (and close by) foods cannot be beat.
Venkat at 10:40AM on 08/17/07
Adam, I grew up in Portland and ate scads of bento in high school. When I moved to Seattle I was surprised that it didn't exist here in the same form. I mean, basically all that's different between "bento" and "teriyaki" is the stick and the box, but still, major culture shock.
mamster at 11:34AM on 08/17/07